Martin Andrew | Victoria University (original) (raw)
Papers by Martin Andrew
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), Mar 13, 2023
This Australian-based paper offers a subjective academic narrative on the methodology of autoethn... more This Australian-based paper offers a subjective academic narrative on the methodology of autoethnography as it is used and understood by both learners enrolled in creative writing higher education degrees and by novelists who draw on real-life experience and personages in their work in the quest for verisimilitude. Closely considering cases of writing in both ivory tower and real-world contexts, the qualitative and reflection-based study reveals that once writers move from the academy to the world of publishing, they are better able to write from experience, and can do so as long as they adhere to ethics of care that characterise their profession. Trained as autoethnographers to draw fictions from life experiences through methodological autoethnography, real world writers continue to follow the ethical tenets of consent, consultation and present and future vulnerability.
The Australian Universities' review, 2020
This study brings forward possible and likely truths that lie behind tenured academics' decisions... more This study brings forward possible and likely truths that lie behind tenured academics' decisions to take voluntary redundancies despite their jobs involving edifying, rewarding and 'passion' work. In other words, the legality of the severance agreement stresses a voluntary motivation, a choice; but the actuality behind the decision points to a range of histories, of backstories. This researcher asked 12 mid-career academics why they really took redundancy packages. Their stories reveal a raft of themes now commonplace in the literature of the 'ruined university'. This paper aims to develop the theory that what appears at an institutional level to be voluntary is in fact as far from a choice as imaginable. It is risky to speak of 'truths' when my methodology is that of an interpretivist narrative enquiry into individuals' decisions to leave tenured positions via 'voluntary' redundancy. I will speak more explicitly about the epistemological and ethical components shortly. My reference to 'truths' needs contextualisation. It comes from my reflections on the methodological anti-positivism and resolute interpretivism of the anti-capitalist sociologist, Max Weber (1864-1920). I was drawn, particularly, to his 1915 description (in The Methodology of Social Sciences, trans. 1949, p.176) of 'the skeletal structure of causal attributions and truths' (das feste Skelett der kausale Zurechnung). Such 'attributions' , he maintained, lie behind the 'facade' of narrative history and their presence differentiates a work of knowing from a fiction. This led me to wonder how these fabrications, based on the superficial story (the facade), become the official stories. In other wordsand it is not possible to paraphrase without calling Foucault to mindofficial history is fabricated by the legalistic stories of the powerful. This historical process Behind voluntary redundancy in universities The stories behind the story Martin Andrew Otago Polytechnic At a time when universities internationally participate in continual processes of restructuring, repositioning and reprioritising, calls for 'voluntary' redundancy among teaching and learning staff become frequent events. Australian and New Zealand academics, whose stories inform this study, have, particularly, been made subject to severance, voluntary or otherwise, at a time when the modernised university has become the managed, neoliberalised university and, over time, the 'ruined' or 'toxic' university. This study is a narrative enquiry aiming to capture, represent and examine the stories of mid-and late-career higher education teaching professionals during this unsettling period of disturbance and flux. In the light of studies on 'voluntary' redundancy and scholarship critiquing the mechanisms of power and repression of the corporatised university, this researcher asked 12 mid-career academics why they really took redundancy packages with a view to exposing the experienced truth behind the official institutional story that academic professionals 'chose' voluntary redundancy packages.
Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice
Compassion in higher education is viewed in different ways by educators. In recent years a focus ... more Compassion in higher education is viewed in different ways by educators. In recent years a focus on using compassionate pedagogy and being authentic, compassionate educators has arisen. Often associated with ‘care’, compassion has been labelled at times to be ‘soft’ or even ‘fluffy’ and holding emotion. Rather, we argue – through critically exploring discourses of compassion and care – that by acknowledging higher education has a relational element encompassing purposeful and trusting relationships, interactions can hold more meaning and benefit. This Editorial seeks to position the role of compassion in higher education, challenging how compassion focused pedagogy and research can be incorporated and enacted so it can benefit the future of higher education. We consider compassion in learning and teaching practices and in assessment, looking with hope to the future where we may see educational values lived in and through our teaching practices.
Scope: Contemporary Research Topics (Work-based Learning)
Scope: Contemporary Research Topics (Work-based Learning)
This paper explores bricolage as a qualitative approach to research. Imbued by the broadly lingui... more This paper explores bricolage as a qualitative approach to research. Imbued by the broadly linguistic 'bricolage' described by Lévi-Strauss (1962), modern bricolage, as a qualitative research methodology, is best defined by Denzin and Lincoln (2005) as "a complex, dense, reflexive collage-like creation that represents the researcher's images, understandings and interpretations of the world or phenomenon under analysis" (p. 6). It is now regarded as a methodology for professional practice research, including creative studies. It seeks to free bricolage from charges of being "undisciplined" (Roberts, 2018, p. 1), mix-and-match and random (Kincheloe, 2001), and even schizophrenic (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). Our exploration focuses on several features of the methodology: its ability to incorporate and allow eclecticism, multiplicity and diversity of practice; its alignment with a transdisciplinary approach, and its concordance with a portfolio method of curating collections of outputs. As a methodology of emergence, it is tolerant of the stop-start nature of practitioner research we recognise from the tenuous age of COVID-19. It holds possibilities for learners and for mentors.
Scope: Contemporary Research Topics (Learning & Teaching)
University of Hawaii National Foreign Language Resource Center, Oct 1, 2004
The Singapore-based Regional English Language Centre (RELC) Portfolio Series, available in Englis... more The Singapore-based Regional English Language Centre (RELC) Portfolio Series, available in English, Portuguese and Spanish, is designed for hands-on English teaching practitioners as well as teacher educators and teachers undertaking professional development. Thomas S.C. Farrell's Planning Lessons for a Reading Class, is a prominent addition to this series of accessible, readable practical resource booklets. Its focus on the identification of non-reductionist principles and their immediate application through clearly identified procedures makes the book applicable in an immediate way. The issues in the series are uncluttered by academic lexis, theory and research processes. They are designed to be picked up, read within the hour, assimilated and applied within minutes. These booklets-too brief to be called volumes-offer a techniqueorientation that immediately appears to be common sense, leading the reader to think "Yes, I can do that today", rather than "Well, I might try that someday".
Despite its richness, the community remains an underutilised resource for migrant and internation... more Despite its richness, the community remains an underutilised resource for migrant and international students of EAL. This paper reports on a three-year study investigating and evaluating the cultural and linguistic value of volunteering in community placements to degree-level EAL learners. Using open-coded data from reflective journals, this paper discusses the range of literacies that 60 second-year degree-level EAL learners describe having demonstrated during placements. The study is framed within social identity theory and constructionist conceptualisations of communities of practice. For this paper, more recent real-world emphases of new literacy approaches offer fresh frames for social constructionism. We see our learners, situated within specific literate communities, developing cultural literacies as social practices. Here we discuss six varieties of cultural literacy. We maintain that learning in community contributes not only to increased communicative confidence, but also contributes to learners' advancing agency through its potential to provide real-world contexts where cultural literacies develop.
Scope: Contemporary Research Topics (Work-based Learning)
The world of professional practice, and hence of professional practice qualifications, is informe... more The world of professional practice, and hence of professional practice qualifications, is informed by a range of core exploratory theories: transformational learning (Mezirow, 1991) and experiential learning theories (Kolb, 1984); and critical incident/event technique (Woolsey, 1986), which more recently morphed into an educational theory itself (Tripp, 1993). Famously Kolb wrote: "learning is the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience" (1984, p. 38). These approaches accord with epistemologies where 'knowing' or 'coming to know' comes from responding with initiative, innovativeness and resilience to moments or even extended periods of flux, uncertainty and the unforeseen. These are responses, characteristic of learners in professional learning settings, that I have elsewhere called "thinking on your feet" (Andrew & Razoumova, 2019). This paper brings together nine short narratives of learners on a Doctor of Professional Practice (DPP) programme sharing their dilemmas and 'work-arounds' or solutions. The study demonstrates the resilience that can result from concerted individual acts of reflection; and, on a collective level, illustrates the range of complex situations in which those on doctoral journeys can find themselves.
Scope: Contemporary Research Topics (Work-based Learning), 2020
This paper explores a range of face-to-face and online communities of practice (CoP) that are use... more This paper explores a range of face-to-face and online communities of practice (CoP) that are used to support groups of learners or mentors at degree and diploma levels using Independent Learning Programmes at Otago Polytechnic's Capable NZ. The six writers each create a narrative linking the purpose of specific CoPs to their observable outcomes. The narratives demonstrate such CoP features as mutual engagement, joint enterprise and shared repertoire. The value of the CoPs, over and above uniting colleagues in times of disruption, is outlined in each narrative of practice. Ahi kä ki uta, ahi kä ki tai, kia horahorahia, purapura o ahi kä | Let your home fires be seen inland, let your home fires be seen along the coast, and may the sparks from your fires rise up and be seen throughout the world. Capable NZ is a college of work based-learning within Otago Polytechnic, New Zealand. Established as the Centre of Recognition of Prior Learning, one key focus is to work with experienced candidates who gain qualifications through an Independent Learning Pathway (ILP) which uses prior experiences to frame new learning through reflection. Ker (2017) interviewed graduates, concluding that many Capable NZ learners benefit from engagement in communities of practice in their professional contexts (Ker, 2017). It is logical, then, for community of practice pedagogies, with their capacity to embed resilience in times of disruption (Andrew, 2020, forthcoming), to inform the learner experience. Malcolm (2020, this issue) describes their value in one such programme, the Bachelor of Leadership for Change. In such contexts of work-based learning, where learning from reflecting on, in and for practice is key (Schön, 1987), CoPs become valuable sites for the exploration of facets of learning and teaching from practice for both learners and for their mentors.
Scope: Contemporary Research Topics (Work-based Learning), 2021
Now in its fourth year, the Doctorate in Professional Practice (DProfPrac) within Otago Polytechn... more Now in its fourth year, the Doctorate in Professional Practice (DProfPrac) within Otago Polytechnic's Capable NZ (College of Work-based Learning) faces a challenge to demonstrate its rigour to a range of internal and external stakeholders. Having celebrated its first completion in 2021 and with others in the offing, now is an appropriate time to celebrate the intensity and authenticity of the organisation's distinct species of DProfPrac. In broad terms, the programme requires candidates to create new practice-led knowledge through a process strong in developing reflective and self-managing practitioners. The doctorate aims to implement and develop the Middlesex model of professional doctorates (Costley & Lester, 2010); indeed, representatives of this organisation serve as annual external reviewers of the developing programme. The programme is also open to scrutiny from within, such as research quality gate-keepers and the broad doctoral mentoring team. Further, it is closely watched by other tertiary providers of similar qualifications, and those wishing to enter the doctorate space. Universities watch to see if the professional doctorate offers legitimate threat to traditional and thetic models of representing coming to know. Is it a threat? There is clear pressure on demonstrating the robustness of the programme and, in turn, each candidature's rigour. Having a clear understanding of 'rigour' is crucial to the sustainability and quality assurance of programmes positioned at levels 9 and 10 on the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) framework, particularly during times of 'super-complex' change. If, as Barnett (2000, 2004, 2017) might suggest, super-complexity is characterised by the constellation of critical moments comprising threats both inside the system (restructuring, amalgamation) and outside it (COVID-19, the world in turmoil, residual neoliberalist ideology), such educational providers must look to their sustainability to endure, and loss of survival would lead to rigor mortis.
Scope: Contemporary Research Topics (Learning and Teaching), 2021
Scope: Contemporary Research Topics (Work-based Learning), 2021
TESL-EJ, Nov 1, 2020
This paper analyses the impact of an evaluation-focused language teacher education program under ... more This paper analyses the impact of an evaluation-focused language teacher education program under Vietnam's National Foreign Languages 2020 project, run at Hanoi University in 2015 and 2017. Funded by The Ministry of Education and Training (MOET), this intensive 150-hour university-level program employed international experts to deliver content about evaluation. The pedagogical goal was to enhance the capacity of 'key' teachers by guiding their application of theory-informed strategies to their institution's curricula and teaching materials. The underlying policy-directed goal was alignment with the Circular on Issuance of the 6-level Foreign Language Proficiency Framework of Vietnam (MOET, 2014), the Vietnamese Foreign Language Proficiency Framework (VFLF). This study outlines the needs the course met under national policy, demonstrates how these were achieved and describes the course's impacts and constraints. A naturalistic interpretative enquiry, it draws on questionnaire data from participants to assess how the program met its objectives and the degree to which participating language teachers reported applying its content to their practice. The study points to a gap between the aspirational rhetoric of the 6-level framework and the constraints posed by gatekeepers where the 'key' teachers are supposedly present and future leaders but often lack the autonomy to innovate.
This study contributes to an ongoing project on academic writing portfolios and relates their con... more This study contributes to an ongoing project on academic writing portfolios and relates their contents and forms to student destinations and imagined communities. Tertiary writing programs such as English for Special Purposes (ESP) and English for Academic Purposes (EAP) need more specificity and focus in their teaching and assessment of tasks for academic purposes in order to create disciplinary identities. Drawing on a series of 41 elicited student narratives from two cohorts over two semesters, this study considers what this ‘focus’ might comprise and describes how a portfolio approach to academic writing prepares students for generic writing skills and strategies while engaging with the types of texts students will read and create in future destinations. The study uses student voices to propel a narrative enquiry into what motivates them to participate in the unit ‘Academic Writing’ and what they realise is useful for their future disciplinary identities.
This paper considers how building e-communities can support and socialise postgraduate learners o... more This paper considers how building e-communities can support and socialise postgraduate learners of Writing in an online Master of Arts taught from Melbourne, Australia. Although participants may be geographically remote, active establishment and maintenance of online communities of practice can help to break down the feeling of marginalisation that online and distance learning participants report (Caplan 2003). This study uses pedagogical theories of building and maintaining e-communities born of Lave and Wenger’s social constructivist thinking about communities of practice (Lave and Wenger 1992; Wenger 1998) to introduce a pilot study of e-community in first year subjects in Swinburne University’s Master of Arts in Writing. The pilot study draws on the insights of the university’s tutors, experienced in teaching writing online, and their perceptions of postgraduate Writing students’ needs to belong. In a first year core paper in the degree, learners work closely with a critical fri...
This paper explores our students’ experiences of community placement. Community placement is a sa... more This paper explores our students’ experiences of community placement. Community placement is a safe and valuable way for advanced migrant and international learners of English to provide the “unfamiliar freedom” (Dlaska, 2000) necessary for learning for an unknown future (Barnett, 2004). Further, this happens within a context of the acquisition of cultural autonomy. The process of joining and becoming a part of communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991), however peripherally, opens windows into aspects of culture, revealing to view Kiwi turns of phrase, behaviours, communication styles and thought patterns. Our research data was collected from year two Bachelor of Arts in English as an Additional Language (BA EAL) learners, whose community placement provided opportunity for reflection on their experience. Their diaries revealed that community placement contributes to the process where “authentic being” (Barnett, 2004) starts to form. In these reflective recollections, comprising ...
At head of title of published proceedings: Autonomy in a networked world, Te tū motuhake i te ao ... more At head of title of published proceedings: Autonomy in a networked world, Te tū motuhake i te ao kōtuitui
When writers and other scholars seek to define a ‘gap’ in knowledge for their writing, creative a... more When writers and other scholars seek to define a ‘gap’ in knowledge for their writing, creative and/or academic, to fill, they inevitably draw on their experiences and ‘hunches’. The notion that ideas for research begin with a ‘hunch’ is ingrained in literature on methodology (Cormack, 1991). Educated guesses, organised systematically and purposefully, emerge from exploratory and reflective practice. Minding the gap – identifying, claiming and inhabiting an original space for writing – is a requirement for writers in the academy, creative or otherwise, research student or researcher. The epistemological origins of the gap go back to the self and the realm of autoethnography. However, to draw upon the autoethnographic in university discourses, artefacts and texts draws attention to another gap: the ethical gap between writers in the academy bound by a HREC (Human Research Ethics Committee) and those beyond it whose reputation licenses them to draw more freely on the world around them...
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), Mar 13, 2023
This Australian-based paper offers a subjective academic narrative on the methodology of autoethn... more This Australian-based paper offers a subjective academic narrative on the methodology of autoethnography as it is used and understood by both learners enrolled in creative writing higher education degrees and by novelists who draw on real-life experience and personages in their work in the quest for verisimilitude. Closely considering cases of writing in both ivory tower and real-world contexts, the qualitative and reflection-based study reveals that once writers move from the academy to the world of publishing, they are better able to write from experience, and can do so as long as they adhere to ethics of care that characterise their profession. Trained as autoethnographers to draw fictions from life experiences through methodological autoethnography, real world writers continue to follow the ethical tenets of consent, consultation and present and future vulnerability.
The Australian Universities' review, 2020
This study brings forward possible and likely truths that lie behind tenured academics' decisions... more This study brings forward possible and likely truths that lie behind tenured academics' decisions to take voluntary redundancies despite their jobs involving edifying, rewarding and 'passion' work. In other words, the legality of the severance agreement stresses a voluntary motivation, a choice; but the actuality behind the decision points to a range of histories, of backstories. This researcher asked 12 mid-career academics why they really took redundancy packages. Their stories reveal a raft of themes now commonplace in the literature of the 'ruined university'. This paper aims to develop the theory that what appears at an institutional level to be voluntary is in fact as far from a choice as imaginable. It is risky to speak of 'truths' when my methodology is that of an interpretivist narrative enquiry into individuals' decisions to leave tenured positions via 'voluntary' redundancy. I will speak more explicitly about the epistemological and ethical components shortly. My reference to 'truths' needs contextualisation. It comes from my reflections on the methodological anti-positivism and resolute interpretivism of the anti-capitalist sociologist, Max Weber (1864-1920). I was drawn, particularly, to his 1915 description (in The Methodology of Social Sciences, trans. 1949, p.176) of 'the skeletal structure of causal attributions and truths' (das feste Skelett der kausale Zurechnung). Such 'attributions' , he maintained, lie behind the 'facade' of narrative history and their presence differentiates a work of knowing from a fiction. This led me to wonder how these fabrications, based on the superficial story (the facade), become the official stories. In other wordsand it is not possible to paraphrase without calling Foucault to mindofficial history is fabricated by the legalistic stories of the powerful. This historical process Behind voluntary redundancy in universities The stories behind the story Martin Andrew Otago Polytechnic At a time when universities internationally participate in continual processes of restructuring, repositioning and reprioritising, calls for 'voluntary' redundancy among teaching and learning staff become frequent events. Australian and New Zealand academics, whose stories inform this study, have, particularly, been made subject to severance, voluntary or otherwise, at a time when the modernised university has become the managed, neoliberalised university and, over time, the 'ruined' or 'toxic' university. This study is a narrative enquiry aiming to capture, represent and examine the stories of mid-and late-career higher education teaching professionals during this unsettling period of disturbance and flux. In the light of studies on 'voluntary' redundancy and scholarship critiquing the mechanisms of power and repression of the corporatised university, this researcher asked 12 mid-career academics why they really took redundancy packages with a view to exposing the experienced truth behind the official institutional story that academic professionals 'chose' voluntary redundancy packages.
Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice
Compassion in higher education is viewed in different ways by educators. In recent years a focus ... more Compassion in higher education is viewed in different ways by educators. In recent years a focus on using compassionate pedagogy and being authentic, compassionate educators has arisen. Often associated with ‘care’, compassion has been labelled at times to be ‘soft’ or even ‘fluffy’ and holding emotion. Rather, we argue – through critically exploring discourses of compassion and care – that by acknowledging higher education has a relational element encompassing purposeful and trusting relationships, interactions can hold more meaning and benefit. This Editorial seeks to position the role of compassion in higher education, challenging how compassion focused pedagogy and research can be incorporated and enacted so it can benefit the future of higher education. We consider compassion in learning and teaching practices and in assessment, looking with hope to the future where we may see educational values lived in and through our teaching practices.
Scope: Contemporary Research Topics (Work-based Learning)
Scope: Contemporary Research Topics (Work-based Learning)
This paper explores bricolage as a qualitative approach to research. Imbued by the broadly lingui... more This paper explores bricolage as a qualitative approach to research. Imbued by the broadly linguistic 'bricolage' described by Lévi-Strauss (1962), modern bricolage, as a qualitative research methodology, is best defined by Denzin and Lincoln (2005) as "a complex, dense, reflexive collage-like creation that represents the researcher's images, understandings and interpretations of the world or phenomenon under analysis" (p. 6). It is now regarded as a methodology for professional practice research, including creative studies. It seeks to free bricolage from charges of being "undisciplined" (Roberts, 2018, p. 1), mix-and-match and random (Kincheloe, 2001), and even schizophrenic (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). Our exploration focuses on several features of the methodology: its ability to incorporate and allow eclecticism, multiplicity and diversity of practice; its alignment with a transdisciplinary approach, and its concordance with a portfolio method of curating collections of outputs. As a methodology of emergence, it is tolerant of the stop-start nature of practitioner research we recognise from the tenuous age of COVID-19. It holds possibilities for learners and for mentors.
Scope: Contemporary Research Topics (Learning & Teaching)
University of Hawaii National Foreign Language Resource Center, Oct 1, 2004
The Singapore-based Regional English Language Centre (RELC) Portfolio Series, available in Englis... more The Singapore-based Regional English Language Centre (RELC) Portfolio Series, available in English, Portuguese and Spanish, is designed for hands-on English teaching practitioners as well as teacher educators and teachers undertaking professional development. Thomas S.C. Farrell's Planning Lessons for a Reading Class, is a prominent addition to this series of accessible, readable practical resource booklets. Its focus on the identification of non-reductionist principles and their immediate application through clearly identified procedures makes the book applicable in an immediate way. The issues in the series are uncluttered by academic lexis, theory and research processes. They are designed to be picked up, read within the hour, assimilated and applied within minutes. These booklets-too brief to be called volumes-offer a techniqueorientation that immediately appears to be common sense, leading the reader to think "Yes, I can do that today", rather than "Well, I might try that someday".
Despite its richness, the community remains an underutilised resource for migrant and internation... more Despite its richness, the community remains an underutilised resource for migrant and international students of EAL. This paper reports on a three-year study investigating and evaluating the cultural and linguistic value of volunteering in community placements to degree-level EAL learners. Using open-coded data from reflective journals, this paper discusses the range of literacies that 60 second-year degree-level EAL learners describe having demonstrated during placements. The study is framed within social identity theory and constructionist conceptualisations of communities of practice. For this paper, more recent real-world emphases of new literacy approaches offer fresh frames for social constructionism. We see our learners, situated within specific literate communities, developing cultural literacies as social practices. Here we discuss six varieties of cultural literacy. We maintain that learning in community contributes not only to increased communicative confidence, but also contributes to learners' advancing agency through its potential to provide real-world contexts where cultural literacies develop.
Scope: Contemporary Research Topics (Work-based Learning)
The world of professional practice, and hence of professional practice qualifications, is informe... more The world of professional practice, and hence of professional practice qualifications, is informed by a range of core exploratory theories: transformational learning (Mezirow, 1991) and experiential learning theories (Kolb, 1984); and critical incident/event technique (Woolsey, 1986), which more recently morphed into an educational theory itself (Tripp, 1993). Famously Kolb wrote: "learning is the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience" (1984, p. 38). These approaches accord with epistemologies where 'knowing' or 'coming to know' comes from responding with initiative, innovativeness and resilience to moments or even extended periods of flux, uncertainty and the unforeseen. These are responses, characteristic of learners in professional learning settings, that I have elsewhere called "thinking on your feet" (Andrew & Razoumova, 2019). This paper brings together nine short narratives of learners on a Doctor of Professional Practice (DPP) programme sharing their dilemmas and 'work-arounds' or solutions. The study demonstrates the resilience that can result from concerted individual acts of reflection; and, on a collective level, illustrates the range of complex situations in which those on doctoral journeys can find themselves.
Scope: Contemporary Research Topics (Work-based Learning), 2020
This paper explores a range of face-to-face and online communities of practice (CoP) that are use... more This paper explores a range of face-to-face and online communities of practice (CoP) that are used to support groups of learners or mentors at degree and diploma levels using Independent Learning Programmes at Otago Polytechnic's Capable NZ. The six writers each create a narrative linking the purpose of specific CoPs to their observable outcomes. The narratives demonstrate such CoP features as mutual engagement, joint enterprise and shared repertoire. The value of the CoPs, over and above uniting colleagues in times of disruption, is outlined in each narrative of practice. Ahi kä ki uta, ahi kä ki tai, kia horahorahia, purapura o ahi kä | Let your home fires be seen inland, let your home fires be seen along the coast, and may the sparks from your fires rise up and be seen throughout the world. Capable NZ is a college of work based-learning within Otago Polytechnic, New Zealand. Established as the Centre of Recognition of Prior Learning, one key focus is to work with experienced candidates who gain qualifications through an Independent Learning Pathway (ILP) which uses prior experiences to frame new learning through reflection. Ker (2017) interviewed graduates, concluding that many Capable NZ learners benefit from engagement in communities of practice in their professional contexts (Ker, 2017). It is logical, then, for community of practice pedagogies, with their capacity to embed resilience in times of disruption (Andrew, 2020, forthcoming), to inform the learner experience. Malcolm (2020, this issue) describes their value in one such programme, the Bachelor of Leadership for Change. In such contexts of work-based learning, where learning from reflecting on, in and for practice is key (Schön, 1987), CoPs become valuable sites for the exploration of facets of learning and teaching from practice for both learners and for their mentors.
Scope: Contemporary Research Topics (Work-based Learning), 2021
Now in its fourth year, the Doctorate in Professional Practice (DProfPrac) within Otago Polytechn... more Now in its fourth year, the Doctorate in Professional Practice (DProfPrac) within Otago Polytechnic's Capable NZ (College of Work-based Learning) faces a challenge to demonstrate its rigour to a range of internal and external stakeholders. Having celebrated its first completion in 2021 and with others in the offing, now is an appropriate time to celebrate the intensity and authenticity of the organisation's distinct species of DProfPrac. In broad terms, the programme requires candidates to create new practice-led knowledge through a process strong in developing reflective and self-managing practitioners. The doctorate aims to implement and develop the Middlesex model of professional doctorates (Costley & Lester, 2010); indeed, representatives of this organisation serve as annual external reviewers of the developing programme. The programme is also open to scrutiny from within, such as research quality gate-keepers and the broad doctoral mentoring team. Further, it is closely watched by other tertiary providers of similar qualifications, and those wishing to enter the doctorate space. Universities watch to see if the professional doctorate offers legitimate threat to traditional and thetic models of representing coming to know. Is it a threat? There is clear pressure on demonstrating the robustness of the programme and, in turn, each candidature's rigour. Having a clear understanding of 'rigour' is crucial to the sustainability and quality assurance of programmes positioned at levels 9 and 10 on the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) framework, particularly during times of 'super-complex' change. If, as Barnett (2000, 2004, 2017) might suggest, super-complexity is characterised by the constellation of critical moments comprising threats both inside the system (restructuring, amalgamation) and outside it (COVID-19, the world in turmoil, residual neoliberalist ideology), such educational providers must look to their sustainability to endure, and loss of survival would lead to rigor mortis.
Scope: Contemporary Research Topics (Learning and Teaching), 2021
Scope: Contemporary Research Topics (Work-based Learning), 2021
TESL-EJ, Nov 1, 2020
This paper analyses the impact of an evaluation-focused language teacher education program under ... more This paper analyses the impact of an evaluation-focused language teacher education program under Vietnam's National Foreign Languages 2020 project, run at Hanoi University in 2015 and 2017. Funded by The Ministry of Education and Training (MOET), this intensive 150-hour university-level program employed international experts to deliver content about evaluation. The pedagogical goal was to enhance the capacity of 'key' teachers by guiding their application of theory-informed strategies to their institution's curricula and teaching materials. The underlying policy-directed goal was alignment with the Circular on Issuance of the 6-level Foreign Language Proficiency Framework of Vietnam (MOET, 2014), the Vietnamese Foreign Language Proficiency Framework (VFLF). This study outlines the needs the course met under national policy, demonstrates how these were achieved and describes the course's impacts and constraints. A naturalistic interpretative enquiry, it draws on questionnaire data from participants to assess how the program met its objectives and the degree to which participating language teachers reported applying its content to their practice. The study points to a gap between the aspirational rhetoric of the 6-level framework and the constraints posed by gatekeepers where the 'key' teachers are supposedly present and future leaders but often lack the autonomy to innovate.
This study contributes to an ongoing project on academic writing portfolios and relates their con... more This study contributes to an ongoing project on academic writing portfolios and relates their contents and forms to student destinations and imagined communities. Tertiary writing programs such as English for Special Purposes (ESP) and English for Academic Purposes (EAP) need more specificity and focus in their teaching and assessment of tasks for academic purposes in order to create disciplinary identities. Drawing on a series of 41 elicited student narratives from two cohorts over two semesters, this study considers what this ‘focus’ might comprise and describes how a portfolio approach to academic writing prepares students for generic writing skills and strategies while engaging with the types of texts students will read and create in future destinations. The study uses student voices to propel a narrative enquiry into what motivates them to participate in the unit ‘Academic Writing’ and what they realise is useful for their future disciplinary identities.
This paper considers how building e-communities can support and socialise postgraduate learners o... more This paper considers how building e-communities can support and socialise postgraduate learners of Writing in an online Master of Arts taught from Melbourne, Australia. Although participants may be geographically remote, active establishment and maintenance of online communities of practice can help to break down the feeling of marginalisation that online and distance learning participants report (Caplan 2003). This study uses pedagogical theories of building and maintaining e-communities born of Lave and Wenger’s social constructivist thinking about communities of practice (Lave and Wenger 1992; Wenger 1998) to introduce a pilot study of e-community in first year subjects in Swinburne University’s Master of Arts in Writing. The pilot study draws on the insights of the university’s tutors, experienced in teaching writing online, and their perceptions of postgraduate Writing students’ needs to belong. In a first year core paper in the degree, learners work closely with a critical fri...
This paper explores our students’ experiences of community placement. Community placement is a sa... more This paper explores our students’ experiences of community placement. Community placement is a safe and valuable way for advanced migrant and international learners of English to provide the “unfamiliar freedom” (Dlaska, 2000) necessary for learning for an unknown future (Barnett, 2004). Further, this happens within a context of the acquisition of cultural autonomy. The process of joining and becoming a part of communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991), however peripherally, opens windows into aspects of culture, revealing to view Kiwi turns of phrase, behaviours, communication styles and thought patterns. Our research data was collected from year two Bachelor of Arts in English as an Additional Language (BA EAL) learners, whose community placement provided opportunity for reflection on their experience. Their diaries revealed that community placement contributes to the process where “authentic being” (Barnett, 2004) starts to form. In these reflective recollections, comprising ...
At head of title of published proceedings: Autonomy in a networked world, Te tū motuhake i te ao ... more At head of title of published proceedings: Autonomy in a networked world, Te tū motuhake i te ao kōtuitui
When writers and other scholars seek to define a ‘gap’ in knowledge for their writing, creative a... more When writers and other scholars seek to define a ‘gap’ in knowledge for their writing, creative and/or academic, to fill, they inevitably draw on their experiences and ‘hunches’. The notion that ideas for research begin with a ‘hunch’ is ingrained in literature on methodology (Cormack, 1991). Educated guesses, organised systematically and purposefully, emerge from exploratory and reflective practice. Minding the gap – identifying, claiming and inhabiting an original space for writing – is a requirement for writers in the academy, creative or otherwise, research student or researcher. The epistemological origins of the gap go back to the self and the realm of autoethnography. However, to draw upon the autoethnographic in university discourses, artefacts and texts draws attention to another gap: the ethical gap between writers in the academy bound by a HREC (Human Research Ethics Committee) and those beyond it whose reputation licenses them to draw more freely on the world around them...